I don’t know I think blaming trump for the things trump is doing is pretty straight forwards and the opposite of playing politics.
>That's closer to what I'm getting at. However, what exactly is "this," though? Does it include deviation from a Wall Street-friendly stasis? Neoliberalism 'till death do us part?
Neoliberalism is much newer than the constitution and the country. Have a sense of scope when talking about the history of your country, it's new, but it's not that new.
The country is completely fucked—that we can all agree on. It's imploding and its position in the world is frankly becoming increasingly pathetic. America's friends pity it at best and detest it for its betrayal of Western civilisation at worst. America's enemies are laughing. If there are people to blame, then I'm afraid it's the American people. Americans are not worthy of the country that they have inherited. Americans are an undignified people, that's a bit part of the problem.
> I don’t know I think blaming trump for the things trump is doing is pretty straight forwards and the opposite of playing politics.
The playing politics part is (among other things) selectively focusing only "on the things Trump is doing."
Trump isn't responsible for creating the conditions that allowed him to get elected. A lot of the people who are really interested in focusing only "on the things Trump is doing" are the ones responsible for those conditions in the first place.
I mean, how bad do you have to be that people would rather vote for a sociopathic clown than you, when given the choice? But you know, thinking about that will make you uncomfortable, lets avoid it and focus on the clown!
Here's a thought: if you don't want to be ruled by a Trump, figure out how to avoid creating the conditions where someone like him could win. Strongly advocating for reasonable policies to create those conditions would also be better politics against Trump, right now than the incessant outrage about how terrible Trump is.
Trump is responsible for his own election and is partly responsible for the division in the US, having made it much worse. He's not operating in a vacuum. He's not a force of nature, he's a person just like the rest of us and is responsible for his actions, as are his supporters, as are those who voted for him.
>I mean, how bad do you have to be that people would rather vote for a sociopathic clown than you, when given the choice? But you know, thinking about that will make you uncomfortable, lets avoid it and focus on the clown!
The people aren't always right. Just because Trump is a sociopath and actively destroying the country right now, that doesn't mean the opposition actually is worse. That's extremely flawed thinking to put it mildly. You'd really have to be a dyed in the wool member of the Trump cult to still believe that the electorate made the right choice in rejecting Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024.
>Here's a thought: if you don't want to be ruled by a Trump, figure out how to avoid creating the conditions where someone like him could win. Strongly advocating for reasonable policies to create those conditions would also be better politics against Trump, right now than the incessant outrage about how terrible Trump is.
Outrage is fine when he's destroying the country. Tone policing is not OK in this situation, because there's 4 more years of this and proposing new policies now changes literally nothing. The damage is already done. It's too late. The US will probably be OK in the end but the rot is much deeper than can be solved by your beloved "new policies" (which actually the Democrats proposed plenty of, but Americans just wanted Trump anyway), the US needs constitutional change at this point.
> Trump is responsible for his own election and is partly responsible for the division in the US, having made it much worse. He's not operating in a vacuum. He's not a force of nature, he's a person just like the rest of us and is responsible for his actions, as are his supporters, as are those who voted for him.
He'd have to be a force of nature to be responsible for his own election. The problem with what you're saying is that it's a one-sided perspective, and that's about ego protection ("the problem can't be with me any my side, we're all good, someone else is responsible for all the bad") not solving the actual problem.
Trump is a symptom.
> The people aren't always right. Just because Trump is a sociopath and actively destroying the country right now, that doesn't mean the opposition actually is worse. That's extremely flawed thinking to put it mildly. You'd really have to be a dyed in the wool member of the Trump cult to still believe that the electorate made the right choice in rejecting Clinton in 2016 and Harris in 2024.
Sorry, it's your thinking that is flawed. You can yell that Clinton and Harris should have won until you're blue in the face, but it won't change the fact that they lost to Trump and the Democratic party was so uncompelling that people decided to take a chance on him.
It's not that the electorate was stupid, it's that the Democratic party either undermined itself and/or failed to offer solutions to problems people were actually having. That's the problem.
> Outrage is fine when he's destroying the country. Tone policing is not OK in this situation, because there's 4 more years of this and proposing new policies now changes literally nothing.
Oh come on. Proposing policies for 4 years establishes credibility. Being outraged accomplishes nothing except a temporary catharsis. It might even be worse than nothing if it allows a squeaker win that prevents real reform to address the issues (see the 2022 midterms).
> The US will probably be OK in the end but the rot is much deeper than can be solved by your beloved "new policies" (which actually the Democrats proposed plenty of, but Americans just wanted Trump anyway), the US needs constitutional change at this point.
Except the Democrats' proposals were timid and weak, and they plugged their ears and ignored a lot of stuff (e.g. immigration: ignored until a last-minute executive order, trade/re-shoring: pretty weak, and mainly focused on protecting existing industries, no risk-taking like Trump's tariffs).
>That's closer to what I'm getting at. However, what exactly is "this," though? Does it include deviation from a Wall Street-friendly stasis? Neoliberalism 'till death do us part?
Neoliberalism is much newer than the constitution and the country. Have a sense of scope when talking about the history of your country, it's new, but it's not that new.
The country is completely fucked—that we can all agree on. It's imploding and its position in the world is frankly becoming increasingly pathetic. America's friends pity it at best and detest it for its betrayal of Western civilisation at worst. America's enemies are laughing. If there are people to blame, then I'm afraid it's the American people. Americans are not worthy of the country that they have inherited. Americans are an undignified people, that's a bit part of the problem.